2) Engaging the Problem of Evil: Introduction

               I can see it now – a meme which communicates with wit and wisdom the problem with which we are currently confronted, “One does not simply: solve the problem of evil.”  I therefore do not set out to, in this single essay, solve – with irrevocable decisiveness – the problem of pain and evil in the world.  That is simply an impossibility.   But even if we cannot solve the problem of evil, perhaps we can at minimum engage it, or somehow do something to mitigate it.  We might just as soon try to swim up a waterfall, but we will try it all the same.  Have you something better to do?  Do you rather recommend that we shut up, take it, and give up?  I’ll not be struck down so easily, even by so surpassingly great a problem.  Having been equipped with a few philosophical tricks by the highly recommendable book God and Evil, in addition to plenty of personal experience, the following is my engagement of the problem of evil.